


Mistakes

by Daxolotl



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Post-Break Up, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 09:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16344233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daxolotl/pseuds/Daxolotl
Summary: Lena lies.James finds out.Supergirl finds her.





	Mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> _Spoilers for Season 4 Episode 1 - The American Alien_

It's just one lie.

One simple, tiny lie. _No, of course she wasn't involved in the DA dropping charges against James_. It should've made everything better.

James found out, of course. There's no way something like that stays buried forever, especially not when Lillian Luthor was involved.

"You went behind my back," he'd said. "You lied to me, and didn't trust me. I told you I needed you standing by my side, and instead…"

"What are you saying, James?"

"It's over. I can't…I can't be with someone who doesn't respect me. Someone who doesn't think I can make my own choices."

She'd tried to fight him on it. Tried to apologise, to say it was one mistake, that she respected him and that she just didn't want to see him go to prison. It hadn't worked. He'd left, driven away from her like she drove away everyone else.

The worst part wasn't even the breakup. The worst part was that the first person she had wanted to call after he left was Kara. To cry, and to tell her her deepest fears and regrets, to have someone to support her and hold her as she lamented her mistakes. But Kara was James's friend long before she was Lena's. 

No. This had probably cost her that friendship, too.

Which is why she finds herself on the roof of L-Corp, the only building she owns in this city she feels at home in now, whiskey bottle in one hand, and feet dangling over the edge. Whenever she's not in danger, she actually likes the heights. She closes her eyes, resting her head against the safety railing.

Her silent, half-drunken self-pity is interrupted by the gentle flutter of a cape on the wind. When she opens her eyes, she's not surprised to see Supergirl floating in front of her, expression unreadable as ever.

"James told me what happened," she begins, and Lena feels the dark laughter bubbling up in her throat. Of course he'd told Supergirl. Just one more piece of evidence for her that Lena was another Luthor.

"Come to rub it in my face, Supergirl?" she asks, raising an eyebrow challengingly and swigging $8000 whiskey direct from the bottle.

Unexpectedly, Supergirl's face softens. And for a moment, Lena sees the hero she'd almost considered a friend, not the mistrustful backstabber.

"I thought you might need a friend tonight," she says, and it's so unexpected that Lena's defences rise up without her really being aware of them.

"Got one hidden in your cape, do you?"

"Lena…" Supergirl begins, and she can't stand it.

"Stop. Stop saying my name like that. Like you care about me." She glares. "You _don't_ care about me. You went behind my back, sabotaged me. Didn't trust me. You don't get to say my name like you _care_."

There's silence for a few seconds, just the wind and the sounds of Supergirl's cape fluttering. Lena takes another swig of whiskey, savouring the burn as she swallows it.

"I know what it's like," Supergirl begins, all caution and nervousness and none of that Kryptonian Self-Assuredness Lena has grown so used to, "for one mistake to ruin everything you have with someone."

Lena isn't sure what she was expecting Supergirl to say, but it wasn't that. She stares, and the Girl of Steel seems to take that as permission to keep talking.

"You never meant to hurt him. You just…thought you knew better. You were so worried about something bad happening, that you never stopped to think that what you were doing was its own type of bad." She sighs. "I'm sorry. I'm not…trying to make this all about you and me, I promise. I'm just…trying to say that I understand where you were coming from, when you went to the DA. You were trying to help James, in your own way."

"And instead, I did something my mother would do," Lena adds, dryly. She's not ready to acknowledge the rest of what Supergirl has said, so she chooses to focus on self-pity instead. It's seen her through the last decade or so, after all.

Supergirl sighs, floating over to sit next to Lena, legs slipping under the safety rails a respectful distance away.

Lena holds out the whiskey in solidarity, and Supergirl takes it, downing about three shots' worth before she puts the bottle back down in the space between them. A no-man's-land of Macallan.

"I feel like I just drank about a thousand dollars' worth of alcohol that won't even affect me," she says, after a moment.

And Lena, despite her better instincts, despite her defences and distrust, despite her heartbreak, snorts. "More like six hundred."

"Oh, well in _that_ case…" Before she can blink, Supergirl's lifted the bottle and downed another mouthful. The bottle resumes its place as a buffer between them, and Supergirl licks her lips thoughtfully. "…Nope, I still don't like whiskey."

Lena laughs, incredulous.

They sit in silence for a while, bottle passing between their hands as Lena slowly grows tipsier and tipsier.

At last, when she feels herself slumping against the railing, Supergirl pulls her to her feet so that she can slump against Supergirl's shoulder instead. "I'm gonna take you home, okay?"

Lena grumbles something in disagreement about going back to her office to nap, and Supergirl rolls her eyes in a way that reminds her a lot of the way Kara does it.

"...Do you think I can fix it?" she asks, in a sudden moment of lucidity. "Do you think it'll ever be how it was before?"

"…Not like it was before," Supergirl says, gently, as she lifts the two of them from the roof of L-Corp. "But…maybe it could be better."

Lena doesn't ask which 'it' they're talking about. She doesn't need to.

She lets Supergirl fly her home, and hopes, just for a moment, that she hasn't ruined everything here, too.

She'll wake up tomorrow with a splitting headache, a glass of water and two aspirin next to her bed, and a single text from Kara.

" _I'm here for you, if you need me._ "


End file.
